


This Is Hardcore

by Anonymous



Series: RNM Week 2019 [3]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: M/M, Malex, Mentions of past Michael/Maria, Post season finale, rnm week 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-17 21:28:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19963492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Michael makes a proposal. Alex accepts. Michael wonders what the hell he’s gotten himself into.





	This Is Hardcore

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bisexualalienblast](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bisexualalienblast/gifts).



> for Amanda, for whom there will never be enough superlatives, Simply the Best.
> 
> written for Roswell Week 2019.

**i. the blindfold**

“You look hot in a blindfold.”

“Thanks? You never know, you know. What happens next?”

“You’re in good hands, babe. Be patient.”

“I don’t wanna be patient anymore, Guerin. I’ll learn to be patient when I’m old.”

“I’m gonna give you a sloooow surprise.”

“I wanna see you.”

“I’m right here.”

“I’m taking it off.”

“Don’t.”

“I’m afraid I’m gonna take off the blindfold and you’ll be gone.”

“Keep moving to your left. More. Almost. One more step.”

“I’m a disabled veteran, this is—”

“There. Stop. You have to trust me, Alex. I won’t look away. D’you trust me?”

“I trust you.”

“Good. Now do exactly as I say.”

**ii. show and tell**

“Then what?” Maria asked.

“I made him take off all his clothes and sit on the bed. Then I told him to take off the blindfold, and there I was, on my knees, naked too. And then we had sex.”

“Have a good time telling the kids about that one.” Maria splashed more tequila into their glasses.

“Kids?” Michael looked at her askance. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. But if we do end up with a couple— _some_ day—well, they can handle it, right? They love that shit. I mean, c’mon DeLuca, who’s kinkier than kids? Kinky is better than cheesy.”

“Is it?” Maria said, dubiously.

“Absolutely,” Michael said. “Listen to this: I knew a girl whose ex-husband proposed to her in a canoe on Lake Tahoe while playing, on a boom box, a recording of his own acoustic version of that song from _Titanic._ I mean, Jesus, there’s about six fuck-ups in there.”

Maria tossed back her tequila. “Well, congratulations,” she said. 

“Not so fast,” Michael told her. He cracked his knuckles and looked around the empty bar, buying time. “I… might have fucked it up.”

“Surprise, surprise,” she said. “Spill.”

“It’s—almost too outrageous to say,” Michael hedged.

“Guerin, you _thrive_ on outrage.”

“Alex says… Even though we’ve been in love with each other for, what, going on _twelve_ years now? —which is fucking insane—somehow Alex is afraid we don’t really _know_ each other.”

“Who does?” Maria sighed.

Michael felt a twinge of guilt. After the collapse of their short-lived coupledom, he and Maria had gradually found their way back to _friends_. They worked better that way, he thought. He considered her his _best_ friend, though he hadn’t told her so yet. Too many unresolved feelings lingered between them; she’d think he was offering her a consolation prize. 

“You and I do?” he ventured.

“Because we’re friends now,” she said. “When we were together, you were a complete mystery to me.”

Ouch.

So much for sensitivity. He had a knack for pressing Maria’s bruises. He didn’t know why she kept him around, honestly.

“Can you keep a secret?” he said. “I’m serious, DeLuca—no telling Liz or Rosa or Isobel or—like you can’t tell _anyone._ ”

“Your fiancé doesn’t know about that time I pegged you,” she said, deadpan.

“He’s gonna find out,” Michael said grimly.

“Not the way _I_ keep a secret, Guerin.”

“No, that’s the thing.” Michael braced himself. “When Alex said we didn’t know each other, because we spent ten years apart and so on, I made this stupid joke—like, maybe before we get hitched, we should reenact everything we missed out on and…”

“What, like, sexually?” Maria asked.

“Yeah. I was like, if that lost decade is bothering you so much, Manes, then why don’t we just—ha ha—reenact our sexual histories with each other— _on_ each other—”

“ _Damn_ , Guerin—”

“I meant it as a joke, but Alex took it seriously, he thought it was a good idea—”

“Everything?” Maria interrupted.

“Just the highlights—but yeah,” Michael said gloomily. “We’re supposed to write a list. Seven minutes in heaven in middle school all the way through our breakup sex upstairs.”

She covered her mouth, bracelets and bangles jangling as they slid down her wrists.

“Er, DeLuca?” he said nervously.

“I… don’t know if I like that,” she said through her fingers.

“Yeah, it’s fucking weird, isn’t it?”

“I mean,” Maria took her hands away from her mouth, “I love it. You’re a genius, Guerin. It’s the ultimate compatibility test. You should sell it to _Cosmo._ I just don’t know if I _like_ it.”

He felt a sinking sensation in his stomach. “So… you think I should go ahead with it, then?”

“Oh, you _have_ to,” Maria said; a little too gleefully, in his opinion.

“Between me’n Alex, though, we probably have a fair amount of fucked-up shit,” Michael pointed out. His palms were sweating; he rubbed them dry on his jeans. “I mean, I started doing stuff when I was really young, and then there’s the hookups I was too drunk to remember… And Alex—all those years under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell—and—”

“But isn’t that why you should be honest with each other? To figure out where the landmines are?” Maria asked sensibly. Michael resented her for it. “Or…” Her eyes narrowed and she gave him a lascivious once-over; Michael inched his chair back in alarm. “ _Or_ you could let Alex think your so-called ‘lost decade’ was a sexual paradise. Anything you wanted to try but never got the chance. If you tell him it was nothing but tantric domination and public orgies—”

“Jesus Christ, DeLuca!” Michael said, aghast. _Tantric domination, what the fuck?_ “So instead of sharing our sexual trauma, I just create more?”

Maria was unimpressed. “Just imagine how much worse this would be if you were doing it with a woman,” she said. “You’d have to do all the times she was grabbed, hit, forced, whatever. A woman eats a lot of shit in the course of earning her vagina, Guerin.”

Michael hung his head; funnily enough, that _didn’t_ make him feel any better. It made him feel like crap, actually. “Maria…” he began, but she held up a hand to silence him.

“I’m speaking generally, Guerin, not convening a pity party. You—” Abruptly, she broke off. She looked around the bar, eyes lingering on the hallway that led to the public restrooms. “Wait a minute. Wait just a minute—”

“What?”

“Guerin, you total—you piece of—how many times did I _ban_ you for waltzing some poor woman into the bathroom— _my_ bathroom—for a quickie, hmm? How many times?” Her expression was thunderous.

“I—couldn’t say exactly.” Michael felt his cheeks heating up. “Maybe a few?”

“Try a few _dozen_! Is _that_ why you came to the bar today—’cause you’re location-scouting for a reenactment?”

“Hell, no,” Michael protested. “DeLuca, I came here to talk to you ’cause you’re my best girl—”

“If I catch you and Alex fucking in one of my bathrooms, I swear to god I will kill you both,” Maria said.

“Noted,” Michael said, poker-faced. The thought hadn’t actually crossed his mind, recreating one of his Pony fucks with Alex—but now that she’d mentioned it… Well. He and Alex would have to be extra sneaky, that was for certain. He didn’t relish the idea of Maria catching them in the toilets with their pants down. She probably _would_ kill them, and then he’d have to hope that some kind Samaritan would stick them in the pods until they could be resurrected, at which point Maria would probably just kill them _again_ —

His mouth was twitching. He _relished_ a challenge.

“Guerin…” Maria pushed back her chair and stood up. She swayed slightly; she’d drunk a lot more than he had, and, like a bloodhound, he’d sniffed out a trace of weed on the air when he first walked in.

“Crossfade?” he asked, going around to steady her. 

Maria was crying.

“DeLuca, hey…” He wrapped his arms around her. “I still _miss_ you, you know?”

“Well, you don’t have to,” she said. “ _He_ can be me for you now, at least once or twice.”

“It doesn’t work like that.” He kissed the top of her head.

“Don’t. Don’t be _nice._ ” Maria pushed him off and wiped her eyes, smearing mascara down her cheek. “I know I don’t have a say in what you and Alex do, but if you do _us_ —it wasn’t just sex. It _wasn’t._ See if you can reenact how hard we tried, Michael. To make it work. Okay, go away now. You can text me later. Bye.”

Michael went away, remorse gnawing at his insides.

**iii. kabul**

“I can’t believe this,” Michael said. “Manes, you were holding out on me.”

Alex rubbed his nose, looking abashed. “It was a wild time,” he excused himself. “Everybody was doing stuff like that—for those few weeks we were in Kabul, it was like, all the rules that governed normal society, that governed the _military_ , were just out the window.”

“So you had a _threesome_ ,” Michael emphasized. “With an Australian and a—what was he again?”

“Canadian,” Alex mumbled. He pulled the sheet up over his head. “Why are you so worked up over this?” His voice was muffled. “You’ve done it, too. None of this is _novel_ , Guerin.”

“Dude.” Michael laughed delightedly and tugged the sheet away. Alex’s head popped back into view. Chagrin and defiance warring across his features. “ _Dude_ ,” Michael repeated. “You had an international threesome in Kabul at the height of the Surge.”

“I liked it better with you, just now,” Alex said.

“Course you didn’t,” Michael said. “And I’m not even offended. ’Cause how could we reenact _that_? Not even _I_ can be two people at once. And you were in _Afghanistan._ Captain Manes, my respect for you has gone up exponentially. I fucking love it.” 

“Ugh.” Alex groaned.

“Can I please tell people about it?”

“ _NO_!”

“Okay, okay. Our secret, baby.” Michael ran a placating hand through Alex’s hair.

So far, their little show-and-tell hadn’t been the flaming disaster he’d predicted. The two of them were having even more sex than usual, which was saying something. They were learning about one another. Nobody had walked out yet, and they’d already made it through some tricky ones. Michael’s _way too young for this_ early fumbles at the group home. The time Alex had jerked off to Valenti’s yearbook photo back in high school—Michael thought he’d handled that one rather maturely, considering.

He wished he could tell Maria.

And now they were really—

_Heating up._

“Do another?” he suggested, reaching down to idly stroke his cock. Alex’s eyes followed the motion of his hand. “The night is young.”

**iv. the veto / the joint**

“I’m going to exercise my veto on this one,” Michael said.

“We get a _veto?_ ” Alex looked disgruntled. 

“There’s _always_ a veto, Alex,” Michael said.

“You mean I could’ve vetoed giving you the handjob through the bars down at the station?”

“Yeah, if you’d really wanted to.” Michael smirked. “But I know you got off on it.”

“Shut up, Guerin. I did _not._ ”

“You _did._ ”

“So why not mine?” Alex challenged. “I thought this was about sharing everything with each other—the good, the bad, and the ugly?”

Michael swallowed and shook his head.

“You _like_ it rough—” Alex began defensively, but Michael interrupted.

“Rough sex, yeah, like you pull my hair and I bite your neck and neither of us can walk properly the next day. But not like—nothing _violent_.” He actually shivered with revulsion. It was his worst fear that his powers might one day get away from him and cause some awful harm to Alex. The thought of hurting Alex _deliberately_ sickened him beyond all speculation. “So no, Alex. I’m not gonna hit you. I won’t even pretend to hit you. I—don’t want that for us.”

“ _Grindr hookup—Berlin_ ” had been the next item on Alex’s list. It seemed innocuous enough on paper, and Michael had liked the idea of trying on a bad German accent. But when they started exploring how they would play it, Alex let slip the nasty turn the encounter had taken. And Michael had pulled the emergency break, bringing the reenactment to a screeching halt.

“What do you mean,” Alex said, curiosity replacing ire, “you don’t want that for us?”

“Mmm.” Michael sat beside him at the foot of the bed. “We’re like—we’re too—we’re _sacred,_ you know? To me.” He took one of Alex’s hands and clutched it in both of his, feeling oddly like he was proposing all over again. “Not even Max and Isobel—. Max and I had our dust-ups, plenty of ’em. And Isobel, she’ll slap the shit out of me when she’s pissed enough, and by that point I probably deserve it. But you and I have never been like that. There were times I _wished_ you’d just hit me, instead of staring at me all disappointed or walking away. But you never did. Neither of us did. And I love you too much to bring that into our vocabulary now, okay? Even if we’re only playing pretend.” He stared intently into Alex’s eyes, trying to convey the gravity of what he felt. _Please don’t ask this of me, Alex. Not after the way we were raised._

Alex understood. “Okay,” he agreed, offering up a tiny smile. “I think I’m relieved, honestly. It’s not something I would have enjoyed, I just—… I just don’t like letting you win arguments too easily.”

“Don’t I know it.” The tension between them eased. He sagged against Alex’s shoulder and refused to let go of his hand. 

“What should we do instead?” Alex asked.

“Maybe we take the night off,” Michael suggested. “Just do _us_.” Remembering something, he sprang to his feet and rummaged through the pockets of the jacket he’d discarded earlier. “Oh yeah, here it is.”

He held up a perfectly cylindrical joint for Alex’s inspection.

“Maria gave it to me,” he explained. “So how ’bout it, Manes? A little weed, a little casual sex—be just like old times.”

Alex’s eyebrows had shot up when Michael produced the joint. “Probably not such a good idea, Guerin,” he cautioned. “I’m—”

“You’re an Airman, I’m a criminal, yeah, I know…” Michael lit up. “Guess I’ll have to smoke this baby all by myself.” He inhaled deeply, hollowing out his cheeks and letting his eyelids go heavy. Surveilling Alex through his lashes, he gave him thirty seconds, tops, of watching him pull that joint like he was sucking Alex’s cock, before he—

“I was _going_ to say, I’m due at the base at seven tomorrow,” Alex told him grumpily. He shifted his hips a little. “I didn’t say _no,_ I just—”

Michael exhaled a great cloud of smoke.

“Okay, fine! Fine fine—but take it outside, or the whole cabin’s gonna reek of—”

A few minutes later they were sat on the porch, passing the joint back and forth. Alex got giggly when he was high, and he was also kind of a lightweight. “Fuck you, I’m not!” he said, when Michael told him so. “Yeah you are,” Michael said fondly. He leaned in to kiss him; then a better idea occurred to him. He took a nice long toke, and when his lungs were full, he dove back in and mashed their lips together, sending a jet of smoke into the startled _o_ of Alex’s mouth.

“Shotgun,” he said, belatedly, as Alex choked and coughed.

“Guerin, you asshole,” Alex croaked, when he could speak again.

“Whoops… Here, try again.” Michael took another hit and kissed Alex much more gently. When he felt Alex’s lips part against his, he exhaled slowly, transferring the smoke bit by bit.

“My turn,” Alex said.

They were still making out long after the joint had burnt down to a glowing roach.

“Michael,” Alex said against his lips.

“Hmm?”

Alex’s pupils were enormous. In the moonlight, they were all but indistinguishable from the dark brown of his irises. He was _so_ stoned; his face wore an expression of bug-eyed sincerity that had Michael shaking with the effort of holding back laughter.

“There’s something I forgot to say earlier,” Alex said earnestly. “And it’s important, because it’s that I love you. The thing I need to say is I love you, Michael.”

“I love you back.” Michael bumped their noses together. “Manes, you’re baked.”

Alex giggled. “Like a cake,” he confirmed. “Oooh, that sounds amazing, doesn’t it? _Cake._ Chocolate cake, all gooey, with buttercream frosting…”

**v. the strap-on**

Michael lolled back against the pillows. “C’mere,” he said, extending a lazy hand to Alex.

Alex hesitated.

“Uh oh,” Michael said. He was so sex-drunk he wouldn’t be forming a coherent thought for another five minutes at least, but he knew a warning sign when he saw one. And Alex retreating into reticence after sex was most definitely a warning sign. “Whatever it is, let’s talk about it.” He sat up and tried to clear the post-orgasmic haze from his brain. “Alex—”

“I’m stupid I guess,” Alex said. He scooched a little closer on the bed. “We can get married without all this.”

“No,” Michael said. He pinched the delicate skin in the crook of his elbow, and the jolt of pain sharpened his faculties a little. “We’re in it. And that was one of mine, so I wanna know what you’re thinking.”

“I just—I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel,” Alex said. He was rubbing his residual knee distractedly, which meant he was thinking about finding the sock to cover it—another familiar tell that he was on edge. “Like, should it have felt different from other times I’ve done— _that_? Do I feel the way a woman would—”

“Well, you’re not one, so probably not?” Michael stretched his arms over his head, sighing in relief as an ache in his shoulder dissipated. “As I’m sure I don’t have to remind you—”

“You don’t.” Alex’s hair, black with sweat, was plastered flat against his brow.

“Just because I originally did something with a girl, it doesn’t mean we have to, like, impose the same heteronormative whatevers on ourselves when _we_ do it—”

“Guerin, I _know_ ,” Alex said. “Just—never mind.”

“Are you mad?” Michael asked quietly.

“I’m not mad,” Alex said.

“This is why we’re doing this,” Michael reminded him. “Right?”

“So you can school me in, like, gender and sexuality theory?” Alex quipped, and Michael swatted his arm gently.

“To make some conversations happen,” he said, trying not to roll his eyes at the words coming out of his mouth. Who even _was_ he, anymore? “To, like, force the issue of our histories—that’s what you wanted, Alex, right?”

Alex sighed, shrugged, nodded.

“This is me, trying to give you access to the library of all my shit, okay?” Michael hesitated, then rolled on his side to face Alex. “And… I don’t wanna feel weird about myself. Weirder.”

Alex mirrored him, resting his cheek on his hand. “I don’t want you to feel weird about yourself, Michael,” he said, very seriously, and Michael just had to close the last few inches between them and kiss him. Once, twice, three times. Alex’s lips were so soft under his; kissing Alex gave him the most profound sense of peace, as if the whole universe had fallen away, leaving just them, him and Alex, in their private and wondrously secluded cosmos of two.

Finally, Alex drew away. “I thought—I thought you said _I_ was the only person who’d ever been inside you.” The words tumbled out of him in a rush. “But I wasn’t, was I? She—whoever she was—she got there too, didn’t she? So that means I’m not actually your only _anything_ , and I know it’s kinda stupid, but I… wanted to be.”

“Oh.” Michael felt a bubble of hilarity—entirely inappropriate—rising in his chest. _Damn_ if Maria hadn’t warned him this would be a delicate one, even though he and Alex had agreed not to name names as they worked through their dirty laundry. “Alex, you were the first—the _only_ —guy I’ve been with like that. Fucked with like an actual cock involved. Because she—the, er, previous partner—used a strap-on.”

“Isn’t that kind of a technicality?” Alex said.

“It didn’t feel like a technicality to me,” Michael said.

“Okay.”

“I mean, I guess we could’ve recreated it with a strap-on,” Michael mused, “to get closer to the original or whatever, but it seemed sort of redundant, considering you have a working dick and all—”

“Thanks for noticing.”

“And it’s not like we keep a collection on the premises, unless there’s more in Jim Valenti’s basement than you’re—”

“Please don’t finish that thought, Guerin.”

Seconds slipped past as they lay there quietly, reassuring each other with minute touches that yes, they belonged to each other, and no, nothing (no one) else compared.

Then Alex giggled. “So, did you come?” he asked mischievously. “When she pegged you?”

“Well, I’m only—” Michael broke off. “I was gonna say, ‘I’m only human,’ but that’s not true. And saying ‘Well, I’m only alien’ doesn’t really... But whatever. Yeah. I did.”

“And did you feel weird about it?”

Michael squirmed. “Maybe? You could say it took me by surprise.”

“By surprise, how?” Alex persisted.

“Um.” Michael wanted desperately to crawl out of his skin. Christ, this was getting personal. Which was the whole fucking point, he knew that. “First, there’s the whole thing of like, wow, so that’s a strap-on, that’s pegging, okay, cool. And I’m thinking I’m sore, I’m freaked out, I’m turned on, I’m kind of embarrassed—it was a lot.”

“And what about with me?” Alex asked, his voice dropping to a whisper.

Michael paused to gather his thoughts. “It’s—different,” he said slowly. His face felt hot, but he was pushing past the discomfort. “To receive—no, to relax. Relaxing as a form of intensity, maybe? Because you know that’s not the way I do things. Not in sex or in any aspect of my life, really. It’s my instinct to go wilder and wilder till I explode. Not like with cum—although, sure—but everything, everywhere. I’m always exploding, crashing, blowing something up... So the fact that I have to relax, calm down for a second, just to make it physically possible for you to get inside me… Yeah.”

“Holy shit, Michael.” Alex looked a little awestruck. “I wish I’d asked sooner.” 

Michael laughed. “You’re up next, Manes. Think about it. You owe me a good one.”

**vi. the wild pony**

“More.”

“Huh?”

“Give it to me harder, Guerin, you’re barely moving—”

“I’m not gonna fucking piledrive you—”

“Your stupid idea—”

“—when there’s only a door between us and—”

“—do it right—"

“Shhhh—”

“ _Yes_ , that’s it, like that…”

“Alex, you’ve gotta keep it down!”

“I—I— _oh_ , fuck—”

“Are you close?”

“Nghhhh—”

“Alex, you gonna come?”

“Stop— _asking_ —me! Every time you ask if I’m gonna come, it sets me back like— _oh, fuck_ —”

“Just trying—to keep things moving here—”

“Guerin, harder— _harder, yes_ …”

“Shutthefuck _up—_ ”

“ _Michael—_!”

“As much as I _love_ —hearing you shout my name—under other circumstances—… Yeah, that’s it, darlin’, come for me—”

“ _Michael… Michael…_ ”

“Oh fuck, just—just like that, _yeah_ …”

**vii. the opposite of intimacy ( _30 minutes later_ )**

“What did I do to upset you?” Michael asked.

After beating a hasty retreat from the Pony, their giggles had subsided once they were alone in the truck, and they’d driven back to the cabin in near-silence. Alex disappeared into the bedroom as soon as they arrived; Michael followed, found Alex sitting on the bed, taking off his prosthesis.

“Because I thought we’d talked through the whole scenario beforehand, and I was just doing what we—”

“I know,” Alex interrupted. “It was kinda… unrelated… to the scenario itself. More like an… accumulation of things?” 

“Tell me.”

“I freaked out when I started thinking about how many women you must’ve fucked in in there before me,” Alex said, speaking very fast, “and I freaked out some more thinking about all the women I’ve _played_ in these reenactment things—”

“Alex—”

“I know, Michael, I _know_ you don’t think of me that way, but sometimes my brain goes there anyway and what we’re doing feels like the _opposite_ of intimacy—. I’m sorry.” He sighed. “I keep missing the point, that this is an arrangement we both agreed to, so that if things get too deep we can turn back—”

“We can’t turn back,” Michael cut him off. His heart had suddenly leapt from his chest into his throat, where it throbbed painfully.

“We could,” Alex said, eyes downcast.

“We can’t turn back,” Michael said. “We’re getting married…” _Aren’t we?_ he added silently. His eyes stung. _Damn it, Alex—_

“We could,” Alex was saying stubbornly. “Turn back. That’s why we’re doing this. So we can know each other. So we can turn back if we have to, and—”

“Hell no,” Michael interrupted. He could feel his powers seething under his skin, demanding an outlet as fear and anger mounted inside of him. “I didn’t share everything—all my _shit_ —with you just so you could freak out and walk away, Alex. I thought—” A water glass pitched off the bedside table, but he managed to catch it with his mind before it smashed to the floor. He put it back carefully. “I thought this was less trial run and more _binding together_. ’Cause at a certain point—which, from my perspective, kinda happened when we were seventeen—you’re a part of me and I’m a part of you and then we can’t lose each other ever again. That’s love, right?”

Alex said nothing.

“ _Right_?” Michael’s voice broke, and he thought his heart wasn’t far behind. He would get down on his knees and _beg_ if he had to—

This was all so fucked.

He wasn’t the marrying kind.

 _They_ weren’t the marrying kind.

“Are we finished?” Alex asked.

“ _What_?”

“Have we done everything, I mean,” Alex clarified. “I don’t have any more on my list. What about you?”

“Seriously? You just said everything we’ve done feels like _the_ _opposite of intimacy_.”

“I’m not sure if I meant that. I don’t think I did.”

“Why’d you say it then?”

“ _I don’t know!_ ” Alex’s voice cracked. “I think I’m scared.”

“Of _what_?”

“I—that maybe you’ll look away again—”

“I _never—_ ”

Alex mumbled something that sounded a lot like _Maria._

“Every morning—I’m afraid I’m gonna wake up, and you’ll be gone for good.” Michael blinked furiously to hold back the tears. “Maybe I’m fucking terrified too, does that make you feel better, Alex?”

Alex finally met his eyes, looking as miserable as he felt. They held each other there, naked and accountable, as endless moments ticked past. Hours. Days. Months. Years, even.

“Let’s do another,” Alex said. “If you have one.”

“You’re out of your goddamn mind,” Michael said.

**viii. once and future ( _5 minutes later_ )**

“Everything off,” he ordered, stripping off his clothes then hustling Alex along till they were both naked. “Now I want you to lie down on your side. Your right side.”

Alex did, peering back at him over his shoulder. “Like this?”

“Yeah.”

Michael stretched out behind him, not quite spooning but close enough for Alex to feel the heat radiating off his body.

After a minute, he reached out and softly caressed Alex’s cheek with his left hand. The _once and future hand_ as he derisively thought of it sometimes. Destroyed, imperfectly healed, then better healed, but against his will. A perfect fucking metaphor for him and Alex, really.

He touched Alex’s shoulder. Brushed it with his lips.

He ran his fingers along Alex’s arm, tracing the topography of muscle and bone.

When he found Alex’s hand, he laced their fingers together. He lifted their clasped hands and brought them to rest over Alex’s stomach.

Then he tugged Alex flush against him.

Holding him close, resting his forehead against the nape of his neck. Hard but ignoring it. Inhaling the scent of him. The scent of unscented soap. Something a little bit spicy, like cinnamon.

“What happens next?” Alex whispered.

“Nothing,” Michael said. “This is it.”

“This is the whole reenactment?”

“Yep.”

Alex settled against him. “Can you tell me about it?”

“Yeah…” Michael let himself drift. “This girl I met in Austin, when I worked SXSW a few years ago… We met at a bar, hit it off, you know, the usual. Went back to her hotel. Started fooling around. But then she got weird, right when I was gonna—you know. So, _time out_. Then she told me she had that thing where, like, it hurts a lot. Sex or any kind of penetration—there’s a medical term for it, you’d have to ask Valenti. So, I started to leave, ’cause I felt weird, too, but… She was cool, really cool, and I ended up staying the night. And we did— _this_. First time I slept with someone, literally just _slept_ , without sex.”

“Oh,” Alex said. He pressed a little closer. “This is really nice, actually.”

“Yeah.” He kissed the shell of Alex’s ear.

“Intimate.”

“Uh-huh.” He snuggled into Alex’s nape. Sleepy now.

If only they could stay like this, forever—

“Everyone who wants to get married should have to do this,” Alex said suddenly.

“You mean go through everything?”

Alex nodded.

“There would be a lot less marriage,” he pointed out, rubbing his nose in Alex’s hair.

“There would be a lot _better_ marriage,” Alex said.

Michael sat up so quickly his ears rang. “Are you saying…”

Alex sat up too. He appeared to be fighting a smile, but when Michael tilted his chin up with two fingers, it broke out across his face anyway. “Yeah. We’re ready, Michael. Don’t you think?”

“I do.” Michael grinned. He grasped Alex’s jaw more firmly and leaned in. When their lips were just millimeters apart, he changed course, bringing his mouth to Alex’s ear instead. “Let’s get hitched tomorrow,” he whispered. 

“Tomorrow,” Alex repeated. Then he giggled, a carefree ripple of joy that made Michael want to explode with love. “Okay. Tomorrow then.”

“Tomorrow,” Michael said, and kissed him.

**Author's Note:**

> previously: THE LIGHT-YEARS, SATELLITE'S GONE, etc. 
> 
> thank you for reading!
> 
> <3


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